lia sophia tomgirl

I Didn't Expect to See YOU Here

2012-02-13T03:24:00.001-05:00

Bonjour mes amis!

Yesterday was Sunday our first full day in France and our first full day without our students. They were the responsibility of their host families yesterday, so j-ster and I went to Paris and this is what we saw:

The Velib bikes which are great in the city. You subscribe for a reasonable amount of money and then you just wave your card at the stand and take a bike and then when you're done, you return it to any stand in the city. THey have this in Boston now too. It was too cold for biking but in the summer, I would want to do this as a tourist!

The buildings that make you think of Paris. I like the beige stone that they are made of and the style of the architecture itself.

This is the monument at Place Bastille which is where the Bastille prison was located. Today, the prison is gone and the French celebrate Bastille day as their independence day on July 14th. This is a tribute. There's a gold statue at the top.

This a new opera house that is right near the Bastille. They still have the old Paris opera house, which is where the Phantom of the Opera was set, but this is a more modern building.

I look at this kind of building and know I am in Paris or Washington DC. I'm sure some of you know the style of design, but I just like to look at it!

There were two guys doing some chalk drawings on the ground near the Centre Pompidou, a cultural center named after President Georges Pompidou. I didn't love th picture but it was quite detailed and they were working hard and it's supposed to rain, so it will be a lot work for little reward!

Right outside the Centre Pompidou is a fountain called Firebird which is a tribute to Stravinsky's composition called Firebird. I love this fountain and I've never seen it empty. Since it was empty, people were walking through it, so I got up close and personal with some of my favorite pieces in the fountain.

These lips actually spit out water when the fountain is on and I think it's hysterical. I also thought it was pretty hysterical to be running around inside the fountain.

This is the actual Centre Pompidou. It was considered a monstrosity when it was built, as anything new in Paris first is. Today, it's considered a piece of art itself and they've gotten over it. The pipes are all exposed as you see and they are colored for the purpose they serve. Inside is a library, theater, exhibit hall and maybe a cafeteria, I forget. We didn't go inside yesterday.

We went to this boulangerie twice. First, to get j-ster a quiche for lunch and I got a sandwich. The sandwiches here make me laugh because they are made from a baguette (the long French bread) and are usually ham or cheese or both. YEsterday's selections mostly involved mayonnaise to which I have a very strong aversion in France because I believe I ate some bad mayonnaise here once, so I had to search high and low for non-mayo. And had to get ham and cheese and butter. Which sounds British. But I was starving from all of the walking, so it was quite tasty.

We went back a while later so j-ster could buy a croissant and I took tons of pictures because you know how I feel about croissants. These pastries are ridiculously pretty. I just look because I can't imagine buying and digging in to such a pretty thing. It helped me not gain 45 pounds the first time I was in France because if I'd eaten one each time I'd seen them, well, that would have been ugly.

This is the Hotel De Ville which is Paris town hall. They put up an ice skating rink just in front and I thought it had already been taken down. I 've always thought it was just a free for all but it's actually quite organized and you can rent skates. They have people monitoring the ice and everyone has to behave. And you have a limited amount of time because people are waiting. We might take the kids there one of the evenings that we are in Paris together. We have several ice hockey players with us and though I haven't skated since 5th grade, I might give it a whirl.

I had to take a picture of this stretch Hummer because a) my sister e-ster loves them, b) k-ster loves them and c) it's the last thing I'd expect to see in Paris! It's so tight driving there, I can't imagine!

Notre Dame. We will be going back with kids, so we didn't spend too much time there. You can see the Paris grey skies arrived by the time we got there and it got colder and darker as the day went on. This is the first time I've seen Notre Dame without scaffolding because they've been sandblasting it each time I've seen it!

See, I really am here in Paris!

We stopped at a cafe before taking the train back to e-ster's and this picture is quintessential Paris cafe. We just had coffee and tea and it was too unpleasant to sit outside, so we sat by the window.

As we were about to leave the train station for the 30 minute right back to e-ster's, I heard a kid yelling MADAME MADAME and running toward us but I thought it was just a French kid. Lo and behold, it was 4 of our kids with their host kids taking the train back with us! THey'd been in Paris for the day, getting a whirlwind tour and they had had a blast and were very excited. The French kids have been so nice to them so far and seem equally thrilled to have finally met them.

Earlier in the day, I told j-ster it would be funny if we ran into some kids as we were walking around, so it wasn't such a shock that we ended up seeing some in the station. We figure a lot of kids probably ended up in Paris with their host families or the hosting student because for French kids to run off to Paris for a few hours is no big deal here.

This is the RER train which is the Metro for the suburbs. There are various versions of trains that service this line and the morning train looked to me like an old TGV which is the high speed train. This one here is a typical RER train which is a 2 decker subway. I actually preferred this one to the one we took in the morning. I found it more comfortable. We didn't sit with the kids, in fact, we think they were in a different car all together, but as we got off, we checked in with them again before we all went "home" for supper and better sleeping last night.

I think that's a memory they'll have for a while: running into us in Paris!

Ok kids, class dismissed. Let's meet again tomorrow for more!

My First Successful All Nighter

2012-02-12T06:34:00.002-05:00

In college, I was a night owl, which meant that among my friends, I was usually the last to go to bed. Maybe 2am would be the latest. But I was never one of those people who could pull off an all-nighter. I never needed to because I actually did my stuff on time.

The one time I tried to stay up all night was the night before I left France to go home after my semester in Aix-en-Provence. We had to get a taxi at like 4am, so I just decided to stay up all night and figured I'd sleep on the plane. Instead, I was miserable for the entire day because I was exhausted and had a headache and felt like d-e-a-t-h.

Generally, in my life now, I have no reason to stay up all night because I never have THAT much homework to correct.

I go up at about 5:30am on Friday because that's what I've been doing every day for a few weeks because the trip was on my mind. I went to school and then we left for the airport around 2:30pm on Friday. I am not a good sleeper on planes, but I expected maybe I'd sleep for an hour or so. I was really careful not to have any caffeine after my morning tea.

That made no difference.

I was up from 5:30am Friday until 3:30am FRANCE time on Sunday, which by my calculations was 40 hours with no sleep. And it was weird. I wasn't a zombie. I wasn't shaky. I wasn't giddy. I just didn't have the ability to sleep. We intentionally took 2 long walks once we got situated and I was tired a few times but figured I would just crash once I went to bed. No such luck.

Once I went to sleep, it was great and the room we are staying in has metal shutters that make it dark enough that we slept until 9:30am France time. I hope I'll be more on track by tomorrow because I am not good without enough sleep.

We arrived a little late into Paris but by the time we got our bags and took the bus to the school to drop off the kids, we were actually there at the time we had asked parents to arrive, so someone had the good sense to know how late we'd be.

J-ster and I went back to e-ster's apartment, where j-ster lived for the year she did the Fulbright Exchange and got settled. HAving lived there for a year, she felt very much at home. It has GREAT light and it had a big enough living/dining room that we can put 2 twin air mattresses on the floor and still move around.

This was the view when we were "allowed" to open our shades on the plane. They told us so firmly to shut them after they served dinner that I don't think anyone dared keep them open. Once they served breakfast, I felt like I wouldn't get my hand cut off if I opened the blind and this is what I saw.

At Charles de Gaulle airport, you do the old fashioned walk down the staircase to the tarmac and to a bus. That's a story for another post, but here are some of the kids and j-ster getting off the staricase. It was exceptionally cold yesterday and I actually enjoyed my too warm jacket for the first time this winter!

The Concorde no longer flies, but one is stationed at Charles de Gaulle airport, so the bus driver drove by it so we could take pictures.

This is the school where e-ster works, where we dropped the kids off to meet their families.

This is the Seine river in e-ster's town, Melun. Yes, it's the same Seine that goes through Paris.

I like to see produce stands with all of their fruits and vegetables out front.

I always look at the bakery goods, but I never buy them. They seem so complicated to buy and eat. Too pretty.

We managed to eat 1 of these for lunch and then another for supper. This is what it looks like when you buy it. They don't wear gloves, they wrap the middle in this waxed paper and then you carry it around and put it directly on the table. When in France...

The new Fiat. If you watched the Superbowl, you saw this little baby introduced. IT's cute! This was like a light powder blue but the sun was going down, so the color isn't quite right. By the way, it was a 7pm sunset!! 7pm in FEBRUARY!!

I have no intentions of eating snails while I am here, but I couldn't resist this cute little sign. It pretty much means Snail Alley. It was a cute little paved path between some streets.

More pictures to come, stayed tuned!!

Into the Wild Blue Yonder

2012-02-10T19:04:00.002-05:00

Well, actually it's night, so it's the wild dark yonder.

And it's just Paris, so it's not wild and yonder. More like that busy city over there.

So, I've worried, freaked out, gotten excited and now I'm kind of in this surreal state because I'm waiting to board Air France to jet me over the pond to France.

For 12 days. With 14 kids and another adult, j-ster.

At this point, I am usually FREAKING out over things.

I am rather sedate, actually. I think k-ster slipped me some valium because I'm very blase about everything right now.

The flight is delayed and I've been sitting in the airport for 3 hours already. I've taken about 5 trips around the terminal, trying to keep myself from sitting still for too long. And they have these great rocking chairs by the windows, but people keep sitting in them before I can get there!

Maybe my calm is because it's the first time I've flown to France with someone I know. In fact, with 15 someones that I know. Ok, I didn't know 2 of the boys until today, but I know everyone else because I either taught them or took them to Quebec in 7th grade, or both.

It's so different to travel with familiar faces, isn't it? All of this entertainment ware that I brought for myself suddenly seems unnecessary because I have someone to talk to. That will get old after a few hours though, I am highly equipped with a kindle, some trashy magazines and a word puzzle book. You would think I have raging insomnia with the amount of things I brought to busy my mind when I can't sleep.

I expect that when we land, in the morning, we will be dead tired but we know better than to go to sleep.

We'll drop the kids off with their host families and go to our host teacher's house and then j-ster and I will walk ourselves silly and force ourselves to stay awake until the evening. We both know this is the way to deal with jet lag, and it's so easy to say right now, but at 8:30 France time, 2am my time, my body will have very different ideas, I know.

And it's cold in Melun, France right now. Not as cold as poor eastern Europe right now, but colder than usual. Like in the teens. Farenheit! That's not normal. I left 50 degrees at home today for much colder weather for this trip.

So, I am off to see what happens when I chaperone 14 kids to France.

And to see how long this semi sedation will last.

The Weird Sisters

2012-02-09T06:46:00.000-05:00

Nope, I'm not talking about my sisters, although I suppose we are weird. Who sits on wet rocks for family pictures?

This is a paid review for BlogHer Book Club and I received a free copy of the book. The opinions expressed are my own, you can all thank God, because if my opinions represented the masses, we'd all be in big trouble.

The Weird Sisters I'm talking about are 3 sisters in the book by Eleanor Brown, The Weird Sisters. I had seen this book a while back and forgot about it and when the BlogHer Book Club asked for readers and I was lucky enough to be one of the fast responders, I was excited.

Excited because I've never read a book for money and excited because I had wanted to read the book and now I had to! And most excited because I MADE IT! I never get to respond to the book club offers in time because I don't have a smart phone and by the time I respond, it's already full!

One of the first things I liked about the book is the cover. I am all about covers. I really do judge books by their covers. I often look at the cover after I've read a book and suddenly realize just what I'm seeing. There are often little things that are subtly woven into the cover that we don't bother to see. I feel bad for covers, actually.

So, upon opening the cover, I was a little dismayed to read the foreword because they talked about how they were a strange group growing up, and their whole family would speak in verse by Shakespeare. They were a very intellectual family and didn't have a TV. They read incessantly. I thought this was a little too weird for me and I almost didn't want to read it because I though these little snippets of verse were going to be annoying.

And at first they were. But then, she either stopped having them use as much verse, or I got used to it because after a couple of chapters, I could not put this book down and the verse didn't annoy me.

The 3 sisters are called weird in the Shakesperean way of having almost otherworldy powers and knowledge, like they should be sat in awe of. Not weird, like they didn't have a tv and they were so weird.

The book is written in the first person plural so you are constantly seeing 'we' and 'our' no matter who is telling the story. And you never really know who is talking because they are all telling the story, except, of course, when there is dialogue. I really liked that twist. I've never read a book from that perspective before. It almost makes me think it's non-fiction, like they are sitting with me and telling me their story!

The girls are all adults and have come home because their mother is sick. Again, when I found this out, I almost didn't want to read it because I'm tired of everyone in books having cancer nowadays. While this is the whole reason they have reunited and it's a very large part of the book, it's almost like it's in the background and you just say "yeah ok, but then what happened?" Brown does a great job of telling us just enough about their mother's cancer without making it all doom and gloom.

The two younger sisters, Bean and Cordy, each have come home with a shocking secret. Rose, who has already been living in their parents' town doesn't have a secret but she is carrying her own burden. And they don't really talk much to each other or share secrets, so they have somewhat of a cold relationship. Not mean, just not all hugs and cheer and sharing of everything.

Throughout the book, we see each character share her burden with the others and they all figure out how to deal with them, but in their reserved, not close kind of way. They deal with their mother's illness, their father's bizarreness and each of their issues in a very dysfunctional but seemingly normal family, in my eyes, anyway.

I really enjoyed this book and I'm ready to read some more of Eleanor Brown's books. The plot moves along nicely and leaves you wondering what will happen next, and I really had trouble stopping when my eyes were closing every night! She does a great job of setting the scene and I truly felt like I could step into Barnwell tomorrow because it seemed so real!

Head on over to our discussion on the Blogher Bookclub page and see what everyone else has to say about it!

This was the first book I've read on a kindle. My sister e-ster let me borrow it to take to France. I kind of like the idea of the kindle and it was so easy to borrow the book through my library. I still love a book in my hand, but I am not so opposed to the kindle right now. However, with the basic kindle, I won't see the covers anymore and as I just said, I do kind of like to see the cover of a book.....

How I Got Kicked Out of Gillette Stadium on My Birthday

2012-02-05T11:10:00.001-05:00

Way back in October, I went to a technology conference at Gillette Stadium, home of the Patriots. You know, the guys who are playing in the Superbowl this very day? AGAIN? Yeah, those guys.

It's the first, and I assume, last time I will ever be in a professional football stadium. Because I just don't care. SORRY. I just don't. Football is lost on me. Most sports are. I'm a girl. I was raised with ballet and crafts, not balls and bats.

After I graduated from college, the football and baseball bandwagon stopped by my house and while everyone else was jumping on, I missed it. I was probably doing this or maybe this and I wouldn't be surprised if I was doing this. But I definitely was NOT doing this. Anyway, the bandwagon pulled away and there went my mother, my sisters and even my father. But he only had one leg in. He can't be fully invested in sports.
While I continued to live in a world where I didn't know one Manning from the other, Tom Brady's name really just made me think of the Brady Bunch and Ochocinco impressed me only on Dancing With the Stars, my sisters were busy following the Patriots, getting my mother a jersey to wear (was it Vinateri? did he play baseball? do baseball players wear jerseys?) and scoring tickets to games whenever they could.

That's right. My family that didn't watch a single sports game in my entire childhood suddenly had to put everything on hold because it's 1pm on Sunday and there's a game on. I walked into my parents' house to find my mother, and sometimes my father, so engrossed in the game that if I had burst into flames, they would have waited until the end of a quarter to put me out.

Going to Gillete Stadium to see a game when she came home for a visit was suddenly not beyond a-ster's plans. Getting excited to have friends over to watch a regular season game was probably the reason e-ster bought her own house.

So back to my conference. It was a tech conference for teachers. They had an opening welcome in a swanky restaurant thing (I am so out of touch, I have no clue, but I think only certain levels of ticket holders can go there) and then the mini sessions were in the boxes.

It should have come as no surprise to me when I sent my sisters this picture:

...and they immediately wrote back WHAT ARE YOU DOING AT GILLETTE??

Seriously, I didn't even have to show them the name on the building. I never thought we'd be the kind of family that could name a stadium just buy looking at the glass.

So, the boxes were kind of nice, but for a conference, they were too small. I guess if you were seriously going to watch the game with friends or clients, this would be an exciting way to do it. But it didn't impress me much. They have their own bars and TV screens and seats facing out.

They each had their own bathrooms. That did kind of impress me.

See how crowded we were? One was kind of hot, too and I felt trapped. I got to this first picture early and got a seat but then realized the presentation was NOT out on the field, so I had to stand to see what was presented. DUH.

I was late getting to this session, so I had to cram in and stand at the back like a lot of these other fools.

This was the view at some level, on the way over to the other side to get to our lunch that they served in that same restaurant. I wasn't too impressed with that but it was included in the registration. I forgot to take a picture of that, but it wasn't worth it, really.

I was amazed at the screen. When you get close to it, like this, it's really just a bunch of lightbulbs. And it's a huge screen. Ridiculously huge. And it was playing stuff the whole time.

This was the view from one of the boxes. I actually made me a little dizzy and I'm not one to be bothered by heights. I think if the stadium had been full and people had been on the field, I might have not noticed the dizziness. See the wire in the middle top? I have no idea what it was, but it went from there to the end zone on the right. I spent a lot of time imagining that it was a zip line. That made me even more dizzy.

The conference wasn't as awesome as I thought it might be. The freebies weren't so great because there was a lot of pressure to listen to the people talk about their product before giving you the free post its or pencils or whatever teachers want to take back to their classrooms. I'm used to foreign language association conferences where they give so much free stuff I have to bring another bag home.

And I got in trouble.

A friend of mine had driven because she knew where it was and I thought it was like a million miles away. Turns out, it's not as far as I thought. And it was nice to have a chauffeur.

About halfway through the day, the Patriots came to practice, but out on a practice field. There was a warning in the conference guide that if they came to practice, you were not to take ANY pictures AT ALL.

So I didn't.

We noticed a huge increased in "security" when they arrived. Lots of people standing around in suits, especially near the gangway that went by where they were practicing. They weren't as covert as they'd like to think they were. But I had no intentions of taking pictures or videos and I certainly couldn't steal any secrets because I care so little about the game.

As we were leaving the building, we noticed 2 suits near the escalator we were taking down. I noticed one of them on a phone and noted that if I had wanted to, I could totally have taken a picture at that point, but I didn't care.

We exited the building a little further down from where we had entered and we were a little discombobulated. We were leaving slightly early, so we seemed to be the only people leaving. We were very engrossed in a conversation about a cool thing she had seen about video taping kids and having a green screen and we were contemplating how to get a grant to get this little product. We were headed toward her car which was about 3 sections of parking lot away and we started to cut through.

A man who looked like a parking attendant with a golf car asked us if we knew where we were going and we explained that our car was just over there. No, we didn't need to be driven over, we could walk, thanks. Just right over there, by the portapotties. And we kept walking.

And he was like "you can't be in there, you can't be in there, you need to get out of there, get out of there now" and we were both kind of stuck in confusion.

My friend was slightly further behind, so she just walked around this fencepost thing, but I was kind of trapped, so I saw an exit like one car width away. I kept walking and the guy was like "ma'am get out of there now, you need to get out of there NOW" and I was like "really, you expect me to squeeze between these fencposts? It's like 6 inches wide" and he was like "YES NOW." and my friend was like "sparkling, just get out here!"

My friend jokingly said "what, is this the players' parking lot?" and he was like "umm yeah".

As we crossed to the building side of the lot so we could get to her car in a more appropriate manner, we noticed another suit had just come out of the building and another was waiting up on one of the levels near the escalator we had just come down.

SERIOUSLY? Two teachers were going to destroy a player's car? There were no signs. They didn't have a "special" part of the lot like I would expect. No "reserved" signs. Nothing would have indicated that these were players' cars if that big mouth hadn't said anything.

We're teachers for God's sake! We were talking about TECHNOLOGY we can't afford for our classroom, that we want to get a stinking $200 grant to buy! Not plotting bugging Belechek's car.

Wait, then we could have sold the secrets and bought enough equipment for the whole school to video tape kids! We are so dumb!!

How I Broke A Cardinal Rule But Didn't Get Excommunicated

2012-02-03T07:26:00.003-05:00

You might have read about my aversion to boxed cake mixes. In fact, I've probably touted my faith in the made from scratch cake in about 80 of my posts. I just don't like cake mixes and I feel like it's a failure to make one. Yes, I judge you that harshly if you buy a cake mix, a brownie mix, or GOD HELP ME, those cookie mixes in a a tube that you just slice. I can still be friends with you, but I can't get past that little flaw. Sorry. It doesn't take much more time to make a cake from scratch than it does to buy the mix, get the eggs, oil and water, mix them and put them in baking pans. It's the same mess either way.

But, I also explained in this post, that I am bad yellow/white cake maker when I make them from scratch. I can't explain my issue other than they are heavy and not great. I've tried a variety of recipes and a variety of oils and still, they just suck. I can make a chocolate cake like it's my job, but not yellow or white from scratch.

Enter my brilliant idea to make a cake to celebrate 5 years of my French group, Table Française. I didn't want to buy a store bought cake because those from the grocery store are even more foul tasting to me than what I can make. I find them very salty. Anyone else? I didn't want to spend crazy money on professional cakes, so I decided to make my own.

So I did this dirty deed. The giggling little bastard was on sale for $1 per box. So I had to choose this one. And there was PUDDING IN THE MIX! A whole CUP! Gag.

But I had a reason that I needed to make a white or yellow cake. Recently, I saw this recipe for making a rainbow cake and I realized I simply had to do it in the colors of the French flag for our celebration.

You take boxed cake mix, you spoon some out into bowls and add the food coloring of your choice to each bowl. Get a bundt pan (mine is of questionable teflon or a substance like it and I need to replace it) and start putting in your colors beside each other. They will run together a little bit but they don't all merge into one big mess. If you look here, you'll see many more colors than I did.

When you bake it, it looks kind of gross on the outside, but as you slice it, it has lovely colors. I don't love the outside of the cake, seen here, but it wasn't about me, it was about our 5 year anniversary, right?

I broke so many rules that night, I think they cancelled each other out and it's a draw but I could not completely cave and buy canned frosting, so I made a lard/powdered sugar delight with a touch of mint. Sadly, no amount of red dye would give me actual red, so as I look at it now, it looks more like a baby shower cake with pinks and blues.

Given that the average age of this group is about 75, they probably had no clue that I was trying to be cute and do red, white and blue for the French flag. They probably thought i thought it was pretty to do pink and blue. I think they find me to be a little on the bizarre side anyway. No wait, I find THEM to be the bizarre ones. Anyway...

It tasted... like a boxed cake, but it fit the need and all were pleased. The pictures I took of what the slices looked like didn't come out, so this is all I have.

The slices were red or blue or white or a swirl of any of the three. It looks pretty. I would do it again. But I really need to make it from scratch next time.

Flagging Down the Mother Ship

2012-01-31T20:02:00.002-05:00

K-ster and his friend j-ster recently reshingled and resided our shop and in the process, added a new light that my father bought a while ago.

For about 6 months, we've been in PURE darkness in the yard at night because the old light was broken. And another light we had came crashing down during the visit of that witch Irene.

I sent this picture to my sister to try to show her how bright the new light is. Her reaction:

Is that Bethlehem???

There's a star in the east on Christmas morn, rise up shepherd and follow....

Keurig Made Me Cave

2012-01-30T19:30:00.001-05:00

Do you have one of these marvelous money saving machines? We bought one over a year ago because k-ster thought it might break him of the daily Dunkin Donuts habit. I did a lot of mathematical research and determined that with all of the gift cards I had for Bed, Bath and Beyond (thank you Discover card points!!) I could practically get the machine for free.

You might notice we have a very snazzy version. Or so k-ster says. I couldn't care less. It's digital and can be programmed to come on by itself. And k-ster's favorite part? It can make a 14oz beverage, which most of the Keurig models do not. If only it could walk over to the sink and fill up its own water reservoir.

He determined that he cannot make coffee at home to outdo Dunkin Donuts unless it is a) at least 14 ounces and b) in a styrofoam cup, complete with lid.

You may have read about my nature habits, so it should seem insanely bizarre that I condone the ordering of styrofoam cups and plastic lids for daily throwing away, but if it made him stop spending money at DD, then I was all for it. I figure what I do to try to help the environment will offset what he does to ruin it.

I found super cheap cups, the exact model that k-ster required, for pennies each if we bought 1000. And so, we bought 1000. Seriously. $25 for 1000 cups. And then we bought like a million lids.

And k-ster has hardly had a DD coffee in all this time. He actually prefers Tully's Kona over DD's burned tasting crapola. Even though k-cups cost a fortune, I manage to get them as cheap as I can find them at Bed, Bath and Beyond. They are the only place I can find Tully's Kona now that Tully's stopped making it. I try to keep it to 50 cents per k-cup.

One of the drawbacks of having the Keurig is that now you have tons of plastic cups all over the place, either in the box they came in, or falling all over themselves. Thankfully, someone decided to make a special drawer just for the Keurig and all of its accoutrements and I had to go and buy it. See how neat and tidy it keeps everything? I love that when you open the drawer, it doesn't stick and the whole thing doesn't slide around. It was $24 at Bed, Bath and Beyond (surprise!), but I used my 20% coupon and saved a little. They give those coupons out like candy, and I take every opportunity to save as much as I can at that store.

By the way, the Khalua? Not such a great coffee. It smells like feet.

My Greenhouse in January

2012-01-28T09:19:00.002-05:00

It's hard to believe that a year ago, k-ster was just getting over his foot surgery and things had come to a complete halt on the greenhouse. In fact, looking back, even at the end of March, I didn't have a completely finished greenhouse.

Once I got things going in the spring, after it was all assembled, I was really pleased with how everything grew. I kept you updated all summer about things I was growing in and outside of my greenhouse. Even into October, I was still getting vegetables, a rarity in New England.

After we had a flash frost in October that no one was expecting, things started to get ugly in the greenhouse, but I did manage to keep some things poking along for a while. I even bragged here at the end of November. Around that same time, I started these little guys, knowing that broccoli would probably survive all winter in a cold greenhouse. Swiss chard probably would too. I know this because outside, they have both held on until way into December.

Today, this is what's happening.

Those little broccoli plants are now making little florets.

My Swiss chard in an old wheelbarrow. It's not doing much, but it's more than nothing.

New broccoli and chard on my new Germination Station mat.

Broccoli is all growing. The two white pots are geraniums that I thought might make it, but they are pretty much brown sticks now.

Who knew that a greenhouse is like another effing room in the house that you have to organize, and arrange and keep clean??? It's been a mess since I started because I was in a hurry and didn't know what I wanted to do for shelving.

We had a really warm Saturday a few weeks ago, so I spent the day rearranging and "building" and now there's a little more space for my walking tours :).

I am trying not to spend any money on the greenhouse now that I spent my life savings buying the damned thing. I'm trying to recycle as much as possible in there. This "table" is a piece of aluminum from an awning and it's laying on cinder blocks. I hope it's strong enough and won't bend where there aren't blocks. My poor wheelbarrow almost broke from moving the blocks in here!

I moved this old picnic table to the other side and those pots are waiting for the new broccoli and chard seeds to be big enough to plant.

Now you can at least walk around. Before, the table was where this chair is and there were pots all over the ground and it was just a mine field of branches and leaves and bamboo poles holding up beans and tomatoes. Part of that was due to Irene threatening to ruin all that was good. We dragged every potted plant into the greenhouse and some never left because it was almost September and ~~mostly because we are kind of lazy~~.

That thing on the chair is a mattress pad. My theory was that I could cover my plants on the super cold nights and it might help trap some of the heat from the black fabric and keep things happy. In reality, it's a pain to throw over them, I never remember until after dark and I'm pretty sure it hasn't done a single thing for me.

When I get home from France, my Germination Station will be filled with seeds hoping to have a home for the spring. My ultimate fantasy is that I will start so many seeds that I will have to sell some and possibly make a few dollars in this process. Huh. Fantasy. I know.

Wow, looking at this last picture is making me quiver, thinking back to this awful night.

I Am So Not the Pioneer Woman

2012-01-26T19:05:00.000-05:00

It's a really good thing it's not the 1800s and I'm not in charge of feeding the masses because we'd all be dead in about 2 weeks.

In the fall, I embarked on my first experience of "putting up" fruits and vegetables for the this winter. It's something I'd wanted to do for a while, but I had some serious fears of exploding pressure cookers and bochulism.

I successfully blanched and froze a few bags of green beans and thought they would last us a while.

After my trial run of spaghetti sauce and winter squash, we went apple picking and then it got serious when I bought an apple peeler. We got 40 lbs of apples and I went to work making applesauce, apple butter and a couple of apple pies. Those pies were to die for. I can't tell you what kind of apples they were, but they were really good.

I made what I thought was a lot of applesauce, a good amount of apple butter and not enough apple pies.

What I really made was not enough applesauce, way too much apple butter and too many apple pies (because they took up so many of my apples!)

Then I asked k-ster to bring me home a few cranberries because he works next to a cranberry bog. 3/4 of a paper grocery bag later and I had enough cranberries to put Ocean Spray out of business.

This was all in October.

Today, it's not even the end of January, and I'm down to this:

My last jar of applesauce. I made some damned good applesauce this fall. This batch was darker because I let it cook in the crockpot so it browned a little because it took so long. One batch had the prettiest hint of pink.

Sadly, we have way too many jars of applebutter left and I've been giving them away left and right. I'm not really in love with it. I used a recipe that was USDA approved but it suggested way too many cloves for my liking. It kind of numbs my tongue. It took a lot more apples to make the apple butter than the applesauce and I am having canner's regret!

We have a number of cranberry sauce jars left and 2 jars of winter squash that I keep forgetting about.

The green beans have long since been eaten.

The cupboards are nearly bare.

Laura Ingalls Wilder, you'd be so ashamed!

Next year, more apples, no apple butter, and I'm going to start freezing green beans much earlier. I had no idea how much planning had to go into providing food through the cold, hard winter!

Hasta La Vista

2012-01-25T19:25:00.000-05:00

Well, maybe there won't be a next time.

I did it. I cut my hair all off.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I just couldn't deal with my nasty locks anymore. Once I realized long hair is not for me, I started toying with the idea of giving it to Locks For Love so they can make wigs for cancer patients. But they need 10 inches and that is a lot when my hair was already making me nuts.

Then someone told me about Pantene's Beautiful Lengths (no I am not being compensated for this post) and they only need 8 inches. That seemed a little more feasible. Plus, have you ever known me to do something without an ulterior motive? If I'm going to grow this hair and cut it off, I might as well have a good reason, right?

I saw in the paper that there was a cut-a-thon at a salon on Sunday, so I called and got in. It was for a non profit that is trying to prove there are nasty things in the water. I dont' especially care about the foundation, but a $20 haircut was looking really good.

I met my haircutter c-ster, who swore up and down she knew me and we played the why do I know you game but never figured it out. I told her I wanted to cut it but that it has to be long enough to put off my face. She got a ruler and determined that I could really get 10 inches off and still have plenty to put back.

It was a little scary having her get the clippers and shave my ponytail off. What if she slipped??

But here it is, in all its glory. I still don't think it was quite 10 inches and Locks for Love won't use it if it isn't, so I sent it to Pantene. Now someone else can deal with my less than stellar hair.

And voilà the results are in.

Oh wait, there's this. Before I can share the remarkable results, I have to tell you how this happened. As I mentioned, my stylist is named c-ster. I liked her right off the bat and we chatted the whole time.

Along the way, I mentioned that I sell lia sophia jewelry. She said she doesn't actually work in this salon but owns her own down the road and would like to maybe sometime host a lia sophia show in her salon. I told her I happen to have a catalog right here. Then she said "sure, I'll host a show".

This never happens in my life. They always tell us to bring our catalogs and info everywhere and leave them in every place we go, but I don't seem to have as many appointments as most people, so my potential bookings from offices are limited.

I was so excited that she was interested that when she pulled out her phone to get her calendar, I told her to wait and let me get mine from the car. I was thrilled. This was like textbook for how to get a booking.

While I was out collecting the hostess packet and my calendar, fearing I would get back inside and she would have changed her mind, I threw everything, including my cut off ponytail on the seat. I backed up to shut the door and my pants got caught. But I didn't realize, I so kept backing up and they pulled out like a foot beside me and I realized they were caught. I undid them from the latch they were caught on, pulled my sweatshirt down and raced back inside. I had no idea until I got home just how badly I had ripped them.

I keep picturing what would have happened if I hadn't stopped backing up when I did and just completely shredded them. How great would that have looked as I raced back inside to book the show?

C-ster didn't seem to notice and we booked and are all set for March. Phew.

Now, on to the results.

When I was in high school, I participated in an All State chorus extravaganza and all I remember from the weekend is a) sleeping on a literal army cot in some stranger's house, b) sitting in an auditorium with hundreds of chorus members and c) learning from a boy that when a girl's hair does this, it's called "the web". I strove for a good portion my life to make my hair do "the web" and now that I don't even care, it magically did this when k-ster took my picture.

I should let k-ster take my pictures more often instead of using the self timer. You get a little more of a view of what I happen to think I look like. And the hair is totally more me. Clearly not a lot of work went into styling this, but I didn't have to because it's kind of fun. I've had this haircut like 100 times in my life and I should probably stick with it.

It also doesn't really know what to do with itself. It's trying to be straight, trying to wave, trying to sit still, trying to bounce around. Hey, that sounds kind of familiar.

And I let it stay down ALL DAY and didn't even kill anyone! I hardly thought about it, actually.

So Long, Farewell

2012-01-24T15:04:00.000-05:00

My hair and I have never had a great relationship. It was a great shade of blonde when I was really little and then it got a little darker when I was in elementary school. I know we don't say people have hazel hair the way they have hazel eyes, but I'd say my hair is hazel.

I don't color it and won't, though I did do a henna phase in high school and I may have used some Sunin a time or 50. Any highlighting I've ever had in my hair was due to sun and Sunin, strategically applied.

This was my senior picture in high school and it's about the only time I've truly liked a picture of my hair. My bangs are a little short, but I love the rest of it. My hair now has lots of white in it but because my hair is hazel, you can't tell until you get close to it. If you look at my hair up close, it's got lots of pretty colors in it, but from a distance, it's not anything remarkable. It looks best when it's been blown dry and is super clean, but I don't wash it every day (the horrors!) so it's not always super shiny.

Since about 5th grade, my hair has never made it past my shoulders. I had years where it was boy short and most of my years have seen my hair between chin and shoulder length. There have been some very unfortunate styles along the way that were not flattering or that required more time to "do" than I was willing to do.

You know I'm all natural, so putting lots of crap in my hair and styling it just isn't my thing. I did curl my bangs every morning in high school, but that was about the extent of it.

I had a few perms along the way, but sadly, the last one was a nasty one and I think it forever changed my hair. I think she actually burned part of my hair.

When left to its natural devices, my hair has waves and a little curl that tries to come out. But it's kind of helter skelter.

Since I've been teaching, I've always taken my showers at night which means that I have to have hair that can be brushed in the morning and go. I can't have a short haircut that goes every which way when I sleep on it.

I also cannot stand my hair touching me anywhere, most especially when I am exercising. That means I require that it can go as short as you want, but it HAS to be long enough to put back when I exercise.

I used to think that a long ponytail while running would be awesome. I wanted to be bopping along, this cute ponytail flipping along with me. This is because I often see a woman running on my way to school who has the thickest, more gorgeous ponytail I've ever seen. It just looks awesome when she runs.

I however, do not have thick hair. And now that I've let it grow, it's even worse. I always thought I just needed to let it grow past some magical point and then it would all come together.

I let it grow to the middle of my back. And it's gross. It touches me all.the.time. I keep it up and back just about all.the.time. When it's down, it makes me hot and grouchy and SO ITCHY. And it's just not pretty.

So, I keep meaning to call my hairdresser but I never get around to it. I thought I might wait until I get home from France but it's making me insane.

So I made an appointment to get it cut at a fundraiser cutathon. Pictures to follow so come back tomorrow.

Until then, enjoy these glam shots because it's sayonara after this post.

I know, I should do Pantene commercials, my hair is that great. But I'm too busy doing stuff like this.

Mother Nature's One Day Assignment

2012-01-23T14:38:00.000-05:00

You might have heard that we had a little snow in the northeast on Saturday.

It was the first storm we've had since October, and back in October, we didn't even get the snow, but other parts of the state were hit pretty hard. October is NOT the normal opening month for snow around here. Late November is more like it. I can't remember a winter when we went as late as mid January before we saw any real snow, though. This was the kind of storm that is ideal in a lot of ways.

1) It was on a Saturday. This is ideal for a lot of people because it didn't interfere with their Monday - Friday work. It was also not a school day, so though we do love those surprise phone calls cancelling school, we do not love making the days up in June. And it allowed for kids to sled all day Sunday.

2) It was not frigid. This is ideal because when it's super cold and snows, everything gets icy, things break and it's just a mess and dangerous.

3) It was not a super heavy snow. Super heavy snow is never ideal, unless you are snowman builder. Heavy snow breaks equipment and makes it really hard to shovel, thus injuring people in many ways.

4) It snowed only during daylight hours. This is unusual and I say ideal because when it snows at night, it gets really dangerous out there.

5) It wasn't a blizzard. This wasn't a wind-howling blizzard that knocked out power lines and put ice all over everything. Those are dangerous storms. This was more of an inconvenience.

Don't get me wrong, we got about 8-10 inches of snow. But since it was steady all day, it was manageable and everything was plowed by the next morning. But when you have 8-10 inches from a raging blizzard, you get huge drifts, you get dangerous power lines down and you get icy conditions that are impossible to plow and sand.

I'm a bit of an expert when it comes to snow removal because, well, this has been the scene outside my door for most of my life:

I've even had to remove snow myself, a time or two. It's not all it's glorified to be, especially for those who are short and don't especially love to drive. And have very tiny bladders that need to be emptied on a regular basis from all the coffee consumed to stay awake.

I even went to the barn and rode in the middle of it. We had about 2 inches when I got there and I was surprised to see the horses were all still out.

They all have blankets so they stay warm but I feel bad that their heads get wet. They didn't seem to be too fazed by it and happily munched away on their morning hay.

Because of the indoor ring, we can ride all winter. This is new for me. I haven't ridden a whole winter before.

By the time I left the barn, we had a little more snow and then the fun began. I'd say we had about 4 inches by then and it was sooooooooo slippery. 4 wheel drive does nothing for you when it's a slippery snow. It gives slightly more grip to power through things, but when you're going around a curve and your steering wheel is turned one way and your butt is going the other, 4 wheel drive can't help you there. I have never felt such slippery driving. Never.

At least people were decent about driving. Another thing I attribute to the fact that it was Saturday. Frogmama has a great post about the fury of people in her neck of the woods, just a few hours from my neck of the woods. I'd say people were quite rational where I was driving. They drove slowly, gave each other wide berths, didn't honk and freak out. Had this been a weekday morning or late afternoon, I suspect there would have been more road rage, but at noon on Saturday, I think people were a little more at ease.

I like to imagine what it's like in Mother Nature's household after this kind of storm. Mother comes home from a hard day at work, Father Time (cuz that's her husband, right?) has supper waiting on the table. She blows through the door in a chilly wind and he says :

"Hi honey, how was work today?"

"Oh fine dear, I gave it a good 10 hours at the office today, catching up on some work, making a few people happy. I wanted to be home in time for supper, so I cut out a little early, made sure I cleaned up before I left."

Now let's make sure no one pisses her off for the rest of the winter and we might have a happy one!

Vintage My Itchy Ass

2012-01-22T15:45:00.001-05:00

I sell things on etsy, as some of you know, but I rarely poke around at what other people sell because much of what I find for sale is nothing I would ever entertain buying.

I'm also more than a little amazed at what people can charge for things and actually get. I'm lucky if I can get anything close to what I want people to pay.

Today, I was nosing around and you will not believe what I found:

vintage highwaist undies

Old fashioned is the new best thing ever. Vintage cut has got you covered on so many levels we cannot even begin to list them.

made with upcycled merino or cashmere wool
$60
cotton gusset with covered elastic

S - M - L - XL
machine cold wash, hang to dry

we make all our pieces CUSTOM yeahhhhhh
so.... if you want a pair you gotta tell us what you want so we can craft it +++

Ok, there are so many things wrong here.

Old fashioned underwear- haven't we worked really hard to get away from our granny's panties???

Highwaist undies- what the heck are these boys shorts and low rise undies for if we are just going to go back to highwasit???

Merino or cashmere wool- JACKPOT. I can't even BEGIN to imagine the nightmare of wearing these things. I get so itchy in wool and even soft cashmere when they are the top layers. Layer some clothing on top of these???

Are you kidding?

I would be naked before I got to school. That would be me, on the side of the road, between school and home stripping off all of my clothes in a fit of rage, scratching like I've got mange!! I am so itchy just thinking about it. Add to that the very idea of wearing anything knitted on my butt and it's all over. Gross. Just gross.

made with upcycled merino or cashmere wool -I'm sorry, doesn't upcycled really mean recycled? Like I take an old sweater, cut it up into something new and call it upcycled, right? So you want me to wear someone's old sweater on my nether region?

$60- this and the fact that they are wool are tied for my favorite part of the whole post. You really expect me to pay $60 for a pair of underwear that come up almost under my boobolas, will make me scratch myself 'til I'm raw and may have been some nasty old cigar smoking man's sweater?????

They've sold 100 of them! Seriously!

Just Add Rum

2012-01-21T19:23:00.001-05:00

A while ago, k-ster was remodeling a house with someone, and when they took out the walls, he found this recipe stuck in it. Thinking this was some kind of destiny, I made this cake for someone's birthday. It was either his, or his mother's. We had some of his family here for it.

Notice the pink post it. You are supposed to put 1/3 cup of rum in the batter and then 1/3 cup of rum in the "frosting". I say "frosting" because it consists of cool whip, rum, pudding mix and crushed pineapple. That is not a frosting. We found 1/3 cup of rum in the frosting to be WAAAAAAY too much.

It's pretty. It sounds excellent. Like a pina colada cake. I like coconut, I usually like cake, I love pineapple and I like the smell of rum. You can't go wrong.

But, we didn't all seem to love it so much. It was good but not great. The "frosting" was a little overkill with the rum. And no one asked me for the recipe.

Today is k-ster's birthday. We celebrated it last night with a cousin, so we had a yellow cake and a chocolate cake.

Somehow, I got a bug up my butt that I needed to make this cake again for his birthday. Now, we had a snowstorm today, but I plowed ahead (ha ha ha ha ha ha) and went to the grocery for the 2 boxes of pudding mix, the cool whip, the pineapple and the rum. 3 out 4 things I would never have laying around my house.

I should call this fake cake.

But I make it "real" because I don't use cake mix. I refuse to use cake mix. Sadly, I don't make good yellow cakes. They taste like crap every time. It's the oil. I learned not to use olive oil the hard way, but even canola oil I can taste and smell.

Chocolate cakes, cheesecakes, patty cakes, I can make those with no complaints.

Now, the normal person would probably not say that the issue with my yellow cakes is the smell and taste of the oil. They are also kind of dense. But because I am super smell and taste sensitive, all I can think about is the smell of fat.

I can smell fat from a mile away. We have some kind of soap in our dispensers at school that is supposed to be super clean or whatever and all I can smell in it is fat. No one knows what I am talking about.

But I digress.

I kind of thought that using my yellow cake recipe with the things that this recipe calls for would cancel out the fat taste, but it doesn't work that way. Between the oil in the cool whip and the oil in the cake, it's like a greasefest and I can't enjoy it.

Maybe that's why I frosted it like I had actually consumed the 2/3 cup of rum first.

Maybe that's the key. Take some big swigs of rum and then eat it and it taste soooooo good.

K-ster still says it tastes good but I'm not so sure. I should probably throw the recipe away because I will never buy a yellow cake mix, so I will never make this cake taste good.

Happy birthday to k-ster who spent #38 waiting all day for the snow to stop so he can now spend all night snowblowing and plowing. The only better present would be if he owned a snowmobile and could be at Snowdeo right now. But, it looks like my future as a pastry chef is nil, so I guess pushing snow around will have to suffice.

When Life Gives You A Canoe

2012-01-19T18:52:00.000-05:00

Ask your cousin to drive you around the yard with his lawnmower.

What? You didn't do this on Christmas with your cousins**?

Is it the lifejackets that crack you up the most?

**all cousins mentioned are k-ster's cousins. My cousins don't even own a yard canoe.

So, Did I Tell You I'm Going To France?

2012-01-18T20:11:00.002-05:00

You might hear a little bit about this before I go. I'm going with the high school for 12 days in February.

I used to do a trip to Quebec City with 48 kids and 5 other adults. It was and still is an excellent trip and the tour company is amazing. Once we get there, they are in charge of it all and they are wonderful. But the idea of traveling with that many kids made me nuts after 3 years, so I stopped.

My colleague at the other school we do the trip with is not pleased that I don't go anymore, but she loves the trip and apparently doesn't get too worked up over things like I do, so she still does it and takes my students. Thank God for her. I believe it's part of what keeps our French program alive.

I've always said I would NEVER take kids to France.

So it's a little ironic that I am now going to France with 14 kids and one other adult. And no tour guide.

There are many things that are different between this and the Quebec trip, but mainly, it's much fewer kids, the itinerary is more flexible (which in one moment makes me panic and feel relieved at the same time) and there is a homestay for the first 7 nights. Much less stressful in some ways. More stressful in others.

I am sure I will elaborate on the many stressors of this trip in future posts, so don't worry, you'll know all of the ins and outs by the time I go.

However, with the trip looming, and somedays, it just LOOMS over me, making me feel a little sick about the whole thing, it's really on my mind 24/7. It's the last thing I think of before I go to sleep and the first thing I think of when I wake up. It consumes me. Some days more than others.

I've been finding myself forgetting things lately and I sure hope it's because my brain is full of pre-trip angst.

Like the other day, I completely forgot I had a class around lunch time. Because some days I have a class at lunch time and some I don't. So I went and ran around doing things and came upon our technology guy being very distressed that there were kids in my room without me. "I don't have a class right now!" I said. But I did.

And I've locked k-ster IN the house. Twice. We have one of those now illegal locks that need a key to lock them from the inside and the outside. We use a different lock from the inside at night, so we don't have to worry about getting a key to get out, but if we aren't home, we have to use the other lock because we don't have a key for the normal lock.

So, twice I've left the house to go to school while k-ster was waiting to go to work after the frost melted, and I've locked him right inside.

God knows what else I have forgotten this month.

I sure hope it's the trip. Or I've got a lot of explaining to do.

And you're not allowed to leave comments about what a GREAT trip I'll have or how it will ALL BE FINE or how I shouldn't WORRY. You can't tell me these things and make me believe them.

You may, however, leave comments about the sundry horrors that might occur before, during and after the trip. I need more things to keep me awake at night.

Semifreddo Drreamm Dessert

2012-01-16T19:51:00.003-05:00

I just came upon this picture in my Organic Gardening magazine. It's called Semifreddo. It's an Italian frozen dessert. I think this might be heaven on earth.

Immediately, I knew what this would taste and feel like in my mouth. I could hear it crunching as I ate it in the kitchen in my mind.

When I was little, my mother made an American version of this: that yogurt pie thing with cool whip. She used strawberry (or peach, I remember peach at least once) yogurt, actual strawberries, cool whip and a graham cracker crust. She mixed it all together and froze it and then she'd let it thaw for a minute and cut it up and we'd eat it. Mind you, we were so classy in our house, we didn't need fancy strawberry sauces to top it off. We just ate it off the Mickey plate and probably licked and our fingers it clean.

That pie was a mysterious delight. Mysterious because we never knew when she'd make it. And because we never had this dessert again after a few times. And because my father liked it. I thought it was really funny that my father like strawberry yogurt pie.

A delight because of the way it all came together in my mouth. There's something about the near frozenness of yogurt, with its crystals and frozen consistency that just makes my day. I can hear it sort of crunching in my mouth right now.

Do you remember eating a pie like this in the 80s? I can't explain why, but I feel like Tupperware was somehow involved in this. Maybe they learned it at Tupperware party?

When I saw this picture of Semifreddo, my mouth immediately felt that frozen crystally sensation!

Of course, having a fancy name like Semifreddo, rather than "that frozen yogurt pie thing with cool whip" means that you need things like mascarpone cheese, heavy cream and you have to do things like whip it for 10 minutes and look for peaks and trails. And you probably need an Italian Nonni in the kitchen whipping it with her stocky arms.

Far more work than my American mother must have done for yogurt pie. And far more calories too.

I have a hankering to make this, but I suspect I'll play my American card and just use fat free yogurt and cool whip. Ooooh but I bet with Greek yogurt this consistency will knock my socks off. When is strawberry season again????

Going DOWNtown

2012-01-15T21:44:00.000-05:00

Did you get caught up in the Masterpiece Classic "Downton Abbey" last year? In my lifetime, I never imagined that I, Miss Sparkling, would one day watch Masterpiece Theater. NEVER.

When we first got the Disney Channel in the 80s, we sometimes watched MOUSEterpiece Theater and that was about all I could handle.

I am not a fan of movies set in times before electricity and modern conveniences. I can't really explain why, other than I just get tired of all the darkness, the candles, the bodices, the lack of cars.

Given the above two facts, I have no idea how I got hooked on PBS's Downton Abbey last winter, but hooked I became. I liked the setting, the costumes (they are less bodice like), the storyline and the grandmother. She is one conniving, hysterical lady.

Every Sunday night, k-ster and I watched it, for like 6 weeks. Little did I know that Masterpiece Classics has this terribly sneaky way of getting you hooked on a show and then they wait an ENTIRE YEAR before they play the next season.

Effers!!

Last week was the first episode of the new season and I chose to just watch it online at a time that was more convenient than Sunday night at 9pm.

I found the season opener to be much better storywise than some of last year's episodes. They moved the story right along, where last year, I felt like some of it dragged. The grandmother's barbs were awesome in this episode and there was some underhandedness that was just what I wanted. Oh, and there were cars are more electricity, so I liked it even more.

In spite of all this, someone needs to replace Elizabeth McGovern as Lady Cora. First, I can barely tolerate her fake British accent. It's the worst interpretation of British that I've ever heard and since she is in a cast of real Brits, she stands out even more. Her lines in this episode bordered on ridiculous and she did a lot of LOOKING and standing there with her EYES ALL HUGE and didn't have much to say. Not much that made sense, anyway.

Perhaps my issue is that I think she is Andie McDowell, another actress I dislike. I can't stand Andie's voice. I look at Elizabeth's face and I think I am seeing Andie but then she speaks her fake British and I realize it's all just fake.

The only thing I thought was a little odd in this first episode was the lighting. Especially on McGovern. Her face was very washed out the entire time. They kept putting her in light colors and then really putting a washed out light on her and she was very ghostly.

Other than that, I am hooked for this season and can't wait for more. Even though it's really hard to say Downton and not Downtown.

Anyone else a fan of this show?

The Real Meaning of Teabagging

2012-01-14T17:30:00.000-05:00

For my mother's friends, teabagging has nothing to do with tea, A tea party, or THE tea party. In fact, it is a very dirty expression. One that I will not explain. I will leave you to google to find out what teabagging means in this disgusting society in which we live in 2012.

This post, however, is about actual teabags from which I brew tea.

I like tea. I have always liked tea.

Iced tea is great, but once I swore off powdered drinks in my teens, iced tea took on a new meaning. Spending 4 years at Vanderbilt also hammered home just what iced tea really is and why they are so fond of sweet tea in the south (the kind with sugar as opposed to an iced tea which is cold tea with nothing).

For many years, I started my morning with just orange juice because I did not want to become addicted to coffee or tea. I also did not like coffee and still often don't like it.

Tea, on the other hand, always pleased me. But I did not drink it every morning. I was really worried that it would stain my teeth. I never want to be one of those old teachers with the brown stained teeth. I don't want to use whitening formulas either. Dont' get me started on the evils of teeth whitening.

So, I went tealess for most of my life.

And then my dentist laughed and assured me that tea would not stain my teeth. WHAT????? My tea ship had arrived.

So, I drink tea every morning. Sometimes twice. And often in the afternoon, if I am home. I am a tea purist, so I drink it with no sugar or milk. I like the real taste of it. And I'll leave the teabag in for the duration of my imbibing.

I also theorize that no one ever complains about tea breath. Probably because tea drinkers usually don't use sugar or milk, both of which create mucus in the mouth which must be what adds to bad coffee breath. I always think of tea as a way to break down bad smells in the mouth.

I became somewhat of a tea snob, when it comes to buying my own tea. I have some favorite brands and types. But, if I am at your house and you say you have tea, and then you open the cabinet and your brands are nothing like my brands, I will still find something to enjoy. Unless it is vanilla flavored. That's a deal breaker because, as I've mentioned before, fake vanilla smells like dirty feet.

I'm not picky about tea in anyone else's house. Pretty much, if it looks like dried leaves, I'll brew it and see what I think. In my sister a-ster's house, I put dried tea leaves in a strainer and put the strainer in my mug and pour the water over it. The leaves still manage to escape a little, but I don't care. Somehow I think it's really funny to make tea like that. I should get her a tea ball. I'm sure the British are rolling their eyes at the shenanigans I am describing as "drinking tea".

Anyway, in my own house, here's the current collection of teas:

It would seem the Tazo family and the Republic of Tea reign supreme around here. I like them all, though I usually start the day with Tazo Awake.

Despite the theories that the decaffeination process actually uses chemicals that will kill us and we'll wish we just drank it regular and stayed up all night, I did get some decaf because I was going for my physical and I thought having decaf that day might help keep my blood pressure where it should be. (it must have worked) Plus, sometimes I like the taste of tea but it's too late at night to have real tea.

For a while, I tried buying loose tea and putting it in a cute teaball that had a cute lady bug hanging off of it. But I just didn't love it.

Recently, someone brought me a cup of black tea from Dunkin Donuts. It was probably good old Red Rose or Lipton tea. And you know what? That was one of the best teas I've had in I don't know how long.

Forget organic tea, tea tips, Irish tea, Scottish tea, English tea, sleeping tea, calming tea. I just wanted the taste of crappy old Lipton tea.

So I had to go out and buy myself a box. It was $1.19. Far cheaper than any of the brands above. Probably grown in China in a former meth lab and harvested by 3 year old child slave workers. But it sure tasted good.

Believe me, if you think I'm hard to figure out, you're not alone. I spend a good portion of my days trying to explain myself to myself and I'll never figure me out, so just stop trying and enjoy my blog anyway!

Feel Good Friday

2012-01-13T19:42:00.002-05:00

I'm going to get paid to read! I can't believe it! I get to read a book, write my comments about it and get paid!

This is like the dream of every bookworm when they are years old.

I signed up for Blogher's book reviews when I registered to get ads through Blogher on my site. Sadly, because I have a dumbphone, I can never reply fast enough to the emails when they offer a book for review. By some amazing twist of fate last week, I checked my email like 3 minutes after it was sent out and TA DA! I was chosen!

I'm going to read The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown, which is a book I actually think I read about recently and wanted to read.

I can't wait to get it in the mail and start reading.

And do my told you so dance for k-ster. I TOLD you all of this reading would amount to something.

Tom Foolery

2012-01-11T07:10:00.000-05:00

I'm sure you have one of these situations that you keep bumping into, but I just have to explain it to someone because it makes me crazy and it happened to me again tonight.

There is a manager at one of our grocery stores that I knew in a previous life, but whom I can't acknowledge now because I've looked at him way too many times and NOT said 'hi', so to start saying it now would just be weird.

Let's go back.

When I was in high school, I worked part time at a drugstore. I loved it. It was a simple job: put stuff on shelves, make them look nice, ring people up, vacuum if you have the last shift, put little displays together.

Sometimes I fantasize about that job. When I have 20 8th graders throwing tomatoes at me because I am "wasting their time" and being "so unfair" because I have the audacity to expect them to work.

When I'm listening to the school committee look at a budget and drop the ax on so many crucial programs.

When I'm calling back the 100th parent to explain that the reason their kid got an F is not because I don't like her, it's because she is an effing lazy liar who has not done a single thing all term and then tells you she has NO IDEA why she failed and I must hate her.

When I'm correcting my millionth paper on a day off.

Because that job was so easy. And I didn't bring work home. I did what I was told, so my managers liked me.

But I only brought home $4.25 an hour. So I guess I'm comparing apples and oranges here. I get paid a little more than that to teach.

While working at that drugstore, I met a guy, I'll call him Tom, who also worked there. I didn't work with him often, but when I did, it was fun. Our manager liked him, so we had a blast from 5-9 on Tuesday nights. We laughed. We joked. We worked. We had silly games we played.

He was really friendly.

And then I never saw Tom again.

Until we both ended up taking a tap dancing class together. At 1 o'clock in the afternoon, on a weekday, one summer.

That's right. Tom, the pharmacy guy, and I took a tap dancing class together. The only other student was another guy. The instructor was a VERY LARGE woman who was about 70. She was VERY LARGE and dressed in very flowy clothes. But she could move those feet! To this day, I cannot imagine why her feet could move under the 100s of pounds that she weighed.

I cannot fully convey how awkward this situation was for all of us. 3 college aged kids, one female, 2 male, one VERY LARGE woman on a weekday afternoon, in the summer.

As I write this, I feel like I dreamed this, but I know this was true.

I've always liked dance and I've always been determined that tap was my dance that I just never got to learn right. I have tried like 4 different times, but the situations always fall apart and my lightning feet never get to perform like they so desire.

So, that one summer, I was working for my father and therefore had a flexible schedule, so I trotted off to tap class for a few afternoons after lunch. With 2 guys and a fat lady.

It was a silent class. Tom and I did that Tom and Jerry bug eyed "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaooooooooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuugaaaaaaaa" thing when we saw each other and promptly pretended that we did not know each other. This was not easy in a class of 3. You couldn't really just "blend in". I was sure when he walked in with the other guy that he and the other guy did actually know each other. But then they never talked.

I spent that entire class wondering 3 things:

1) is Tom gay and that's his lover?
2) are these 2 in some show together and they are totally straight but they have to learn this dance ASAP?
3) HOW did this lady get so FAT if she tap danced her whole life?????

I remember a lot of dances I've learned in my lifetime, but other than what Tom and his buddy were wearing, and the fact that the lady was so FAT, I cannot tell you another thing about that time. Oh, except that it was very hot at 1 in the afternoon to be dancing in a non air conditioned space.

There was no recital. I was too old for my mother to be driving me to class or to be paying for it, so I am sure she has no idea what this is about.

It was like I was in some vortex of inappropriateness involving 2 guys, a fat tap teacher and the summer.

Fast forward to some time after college when I returned home to teach.

I walked into the grocery store, the very same building where Tom and I once worked at a drugstore and LO AND BEHOLD who should appear in front of me but TOM!

My first thought was "OH GOD the last time I saw you, you were tap dancing with knee high athletic socks on!" And I ran the other way.

We have 2 grocery store options within 1/4 of a mile of each other. I tend to go to the non-Tom store not because of Tom but because the non-Tom store is usually offering some deal (like the current gas deal) or because they have the hand held scanner that has cut down my shopping time like 25 minutes, TOPS. Tom's store doesn't have these.

Over time, I have seen Tom countless times in his grocery store. He is a store manager. I think it's ironic and kind of sad that he never worked anywhere but in this very building for his entire career. So far, anyway. He's probably not 40 yet. I estimate him to be around my age, maybe a little older.

Each time I visit his store, I find myself going "hmm, I wonder if Tom still works here" and then I turn a corner, and there he is.

And I run away.

Because there are now 2 things I think when I see him:

1) I once took a tap dancing class with you and we pretended not to know each other but there was nowhere to hide and it has left permanent scars on my psyche
2) why does Tom look FREAKISHLY identical to the way he did when we worked together in 1991? Like he has not aged one single bit. He's a good looking guy who always looks ready to laugh. But he does not age. Like, in a freakish way. It's been 21 damned years. Everyone I went to school with looks a LITTLE different.

Not Tom. He still has his 1980s style permed looking hair(his worst feature). His nice grin. He hasn't put on weight.

Who is this enigma called Tom?

Why was he taking that class and how could he do that in the middle of the day?

How long will we play the 'I don't know you ' game?

Do you have these situations? I can't be the only one, right?

The Technology Cross I Bear

2012-01-10T11:39:00.001-05:00

I have no idea what I am doing in blogland. I just wing it. I read things, I look at how people do things, I copy them and I have this magical blog. It keeps me entertained. It also keeps a record of things that I forget (except for those pictures of last year's goregous amaryllis that I can't find!).

And recently, it has been pretending that since January 1, I have posted nothing. INdeed, I have posted almost every day since then.

Something is amiss with my feed. And this is where it all falls apart for me. I fall right into the abyss of ignorance once I utter the word 'feed' because I really don't know how it all works.

I followed the feedburner directions, I copied, I pasted, I clicked, I checked, I authorized. And all was well. I had subscribers. They got my updates in their google reader.

And then it all stopped.

I tried looking for ways to figure out what might have gone wrong and was steered down a path that had so much html, I sat down and tried to find myself a techie. But k-ster was busy, and a-ster was busy, so I got busy pretending I am a techie.

And I think I might have failed. Because I think many of you still think I fell off the blog on January 1, never to be heard from again. I even put myself in my own blogroll and I can't get back up to the top.

This is when I hate technology. When I get to the point where I think I know it all and things are going so smoothly and then it all goes kaput. And it's no longer as simple as 'well, did you turn it ON?'

Now I have to have a phD in html to make it all work.

Damn.

This Is Only A Test

2012-01-09T20:22:00.002-05:00

I don't know how many of you out there only read me because you subscribed to my feeds, but I think I'm having a feed issue.

I haven't seen much of you regulars lately and my sister recently asked me why I haven't been posting. But I have been!

When I leave comments on other people's blogs, it says that my last post was Deep Thoughts but that was 8 days ago!

I've been posting, I swear!

Can someone help me figure out how I can figure out what happened?

My Long Lost Sister

2012-01-09T20:00:00.001-05:00

My sister a-ster was a techie long before I was and started a blog and an etsy before me too.

Then I jumped on the bandwagon and it wasn't cool anymore, or something, so she stopped.

And then she moved.

And then she had a baby.

And then she came back to the blogosphere!

So I added her back into my blogroll so we can keep track of her latest inventions.

Go see her crafty brilliance! She has made some cute clothes for l-ster already. And she's planning to participate regularly in Project Run and Play.

You better add her to your blogroll if you are at all crafty or like to stand in awe of those who are.